How To Paint Beadboard Panels and Get Professional Results

Below are the steps required to get professional painting results. In each step we give product recommendations based on our painting experience. If you have questions with regards to the the painting process or painting products you can give us a call.

Beadboard Painting Process Steps

Ready Patch nail holes, outside corner butt joints and molding scarf joint seams. Do not Ready Patch inside corner seams because you will caulk them in step 7. Ready Patch is the preferred wood filler because it spreads easy, does not shrink, dries quickly and can be primed when dry to the touch.

Prime the top cap and baseboard moldings in the horizontal direction and prime the beadboard panels in the vertical direction. We recommend a high quality rat tail paint brush. A rat tail brush is ideal for fine trim painting because it is not as thick as a standard brush and will not hold too much paint. Elder & Jenks 2 1/2" Rat Tail Angle Sash Brush with 100% Chinex Chiseled Filaments is a great brush that is made in the USA.

Vacuum the Beadboard and the moldings to pick up the majority of the dust and use a clean lint cloth to wipe down the panels and the moldings.

If necessary apply a second coat of primer, repeat light sanding and cleaning steps.

Caulk inside corner and bottom of beadboard panels to fill the void between the beadboard and the baseboard molding with a quality caulk such as Dap Alex Plus Latex Caulk.

Vacuum the Beadboard and the moldings to pick up the majority of the dust and use a clean lint cloth to wipe down the panels and the moldings.

Start painting from one side of the wall section and work across painting the moldings and beadboard panels together. Paint the top cap and baseboard in the horizontal direction and the beadboard panels in the vertical direction. Don't paint more than 10" across at a time. This process of moving across simultaneously is important so that the paint won't setup and get tacky.

Never paint from the gallon container. We recommend pouring a couple of inches of paint into a paint trim cup.

Use a good quality trim paint. We have had great success with Muralo Ultra Waterborne Satin Flow Enamel. It provides a premium quality finish designed for interior trim. It is formulated to give a hard, tough scrubbable finish and is ideal for beadboard wainscoting.

Coverage - Each gallon of Muralo Ultra Satin Paint will cover approximately 300 square feet. Example - if your beadboard kit is 3 feet tall you should be able to paint approximately 100 linear feet per gallon, so if you are applying 2 coats of paint each gallon will cover approximately 50 linear feet.